Stitched together
by The Croc Shop
Summary: He curled up in the expanse between her legs. Matrix, AndrAIa, and the morning light.


Disclaimer: I do not own nor do I claim to own any characters or concepts related to _ReBoot._ This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.

This is set about three-fourths of the way from "Game Over" to "Icons." Warning for some sexual content. (This is likely the closest I'll ever come to writing smut, so take that as you will.)

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**Stitched together**

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He curled up in the expanse between her legs, her knees rising to either side of him, those long and even limbs turned at sharp angles. It was morning still and so it would remain for another nanosecond or two, and for now, at least, they had nowhere to go, nothing to do, no system to save or Game to win.

AndrAIa stretched and turned her face to the light streaming through the window. Her skin thrummed, still slick, but drying fast. She needed more cycles like these: lazy cycles squandered in bed, with the rising light of morning spilled upon her skin and Enzo content to lay beside her.

Enzo stirred between her legs. He weighed her calf and measured the curve of it, and made his way up to her knee; obligingly, she turned it out, showing to him her thigh. Between her legs, he stilled. After a moment, so, too, did she.

A lengthy, graceful pucker bisected her inner thigh: a charitable gesture from a maddened virus two systems back. It was healed now, mostly, but for the occasional twinge, and the periodic throbbing late in the night cycle, when the exertion and stress of the day cycle caught up to her.

Enzo touched the knotted flesh there. The skin was tender still, the weight of his fingers an ache like a fading bruise. Where his hand rested, she itched; low in her belly, she itched. He ran his hand up the length of the scar, his palm a brand on her thigh, the calluses dragging across her skin.

"Ah," said AndrAIa.

His fingers fluttered; he retracted his hand.

"Sorry," he said, roughly. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Don't be." AndrAIa nudged him with her foot. Her ankle pressed against his hip. Lightly she said, "I'm not that fragile."

Carefully he brushed his fingertips across the smooth stretch of skin low on her thigh, below the ridge of scar tissue. Head turned down, eyes hidden, the line of his shoulders bowed. She imagined reaching out to him, to straighten his back with her hands and draw him up into her arms and kiss the ache out of his mouth. His hand on her leg kept her there.

He swept his thumb along a slow, smooth course parallel to the twist of her scar.

"Does it hurt?"

She curled her toes, her calves flexing with them. "A little bit, sometimes," she allowed. "If I've been on it for too long, or if I hit it _ju_-ust right."

He curled his fingers into his palm. "I'm sorry."

"Didn't we just go over this?" she said. She smiled at him, the tousled, sweat-bright hair, the face turned to the bony juncture of her knee. "Don't be," she said again.

"I should have been there."

"But you weren't."

"I should have," he said.

She rolled up on to her elbows, then up again onto her hands. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, a tangled mess. She pressed her knee to his chin, turning his face away. The newness of his beard scratched her.

"Sparky," she said, then: "Enzo."

He lifted his eyes: the soft violet, the steady gold. She reached out to him then, to trace the narrow line of his scar from brow to cheek. His lashes fluttered against her fingertips; he closed his eyes. The tissue of his eyelid was misshapen, distorted by the blow that had taken his eye.

"Even if you had been there," she said, touching his marked cheek, "that doesn't mean you could have stopped it from happening."

He bowed his head beneath her hand and turned to her thigh, leaving her fingers to trail from his cheek to his brow to the snarl of his hair. She coiled her fingers in his hair and curled her toes against the hard corner of his hip.

Enzo splayed his fingers on her thigh. He touched his mouth to the corner of her scar nearest her knee, a dry kiss which he repeated higher on her thigh, between his spreading fingers. That was another kind of apology. He laid another kiss out on her skin and another above it, and another above that, softer each time, now lingering. His touch was heating; his breath, kindling.

AndrAIa knit her fingers into his hair, mapping the topography of his scalp. The swelling morning light glimmered, catching in the beads of sweat which dotted his hair, sticky on her skin. He smoothed his hand out upon her hip, his fingers sweeping across the flat plane of her belly.

She rested her cheek on her shoulder and wriggled her toes against his leg. "Are you going somewhere with this, lover?"

He dropped a kiss into the soft fold of flesh where her thigh met with her hip, and she felt his smile flush against her skin: the arc of his lips, the coarse tickle of his beard.

"I have an idea, yeah," he said. He let another kiss fall there in that private corner, then turned, parting the patch of thick blue curls with his thumb, his kiss following after it.

"Oh-h," she said, drawing it out: realization, feigned. She twisted her fingers in his hair. "That's where you're going. Very clever."

His laugh shook through her, a low vibration running up her spine and dropping down to pool in her gut. She wound her leg about his back, her heel digging into the thick muscles low between his shoulders, and stroked her fingers across his temple. He shifted, tipping his head beneath her hand. The breath spilled out of her.

Enzo set his other hand on her knee, then slid it up to rest on her thigh, his fingers spread wide, his palm covering the white-orange flash of scar.

AndrAIa turned her face up to the swelling morning light.

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This story was originally posted at livejournal on 10/28/2009.


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